The Unknown Knowns

by Jeffrey Rotter

  “Ah, but what is the use in describing Her?—You will soon see the Queen for yourself, dear daughter! But I—I will never behold your mother again.”

  Labiaxa burns with questions—The Queen? My mother?—but she holds her tongue in deference to her heartsick papa. After a time, the old man regains his composure and continues on with his uncanny tale.

  “She touched the walls that surrounded us,” he says, laying a hand on the invisible wall of his imagining, “and the milk white glass turned suddenly clear. I saw at once that we were perched atop a tower inside a fragile bubble of air. All around us lay the endless sea. Spread out below, to the limits of my sight, I beheld a vast undersea city. And though we must have been many furlongs under the surface, the scene was gaily lit. Luminescent jellyfish floated past like papyrus lanterns on a lake, casting everything in a ghostly life-light.

  “Our own tower was merely the tallest in a broad ring of glass minarets. There might have been a dozen or more, each one crowned with an onion dome that glowed with an urgent blue light. In the middle of this circle of buildings was a kind of lawn, bespattered with reds and blues, that seemed to my weary eyes to simmer like soup in a cauldron.

  “But that was only the beginning of the marvels that met my astonished eyes that first day. The city was patrolled by an aquatic cavalry of woman warriors, dressed in shining crimson armor and mounted on dolphins. I remember a manta more fluid than a hawk and big as a chariot. On its back sat a circle of children diverting themselves with a ball and jacks.

  “Farther below, on the sandy sea floor, a marketplace teemed with vendors. Ladies strode the broad avenues, their male companions trailing several paces behind like footmen. I remember a garden of blossoming sea foliage that ringed the city. It seemed to me that it was springtime in this strange land.

  “Gazing up through the concave lens of our roof, I spied the red ceiling of the city itself. It soared over everything like a great fisher’s net. Perhaps it was a huge reef—I saw flashing schools of fish swim around it—that had been carved into a massive dome.

  “From where I stood I could see everything, dear daughter. Everything! But I understood—precisely nothing! My aquatic quarters lay atop the loftiest spire in the entire city, but my mind was earthbound.

  “I was a sailor, remember, and thus well acquainted with fantastic tales of the sea. But I was a man of science too and by nature a skeptic. In these stories I heard nothing more than the delusions of lonely men, glittering lies and tricks of the mind strung out like baubles to sweeten our endless voyages. But if the sailors’ tales were true, I had surely arrived in the mythical city called Nautika. And the lofty aspect of my hostess told me that I was now the guest—or perhaps prisoner—of its most highborn citizen.”

  The bench shakes beneath them. Labiaxa feels the tremors of the earth travel up her spine, climbing that column of sensation to fracture her consciousness. Her world is loosening, becoming less distinct, less certain.

  “In Her womanly guise She drew close beside me and took to stroking my head, still cooing in Her melodious tongue. I fell back onto the bed as if drugged. She sat beside me. I fell asleep, and when I woke the sea maiden was still at my side. I slept; I woke; She remained. The length of my convalescence I can scarcely calculate. Nautika is far removed from the harsh signal of our sun. Passing hours are marked by incremental brightening and darkening of the surrounding sea. And time? It meant nothing to me there. For the longer I remained, the deeper I fell into the hourless realm of love.”

  Here Aricos stands. Taking Labiaxa’s hands in his, he kneels before his daughter.

  “We are not the same species, your mother and I,” he says. “She belongs to an aquatic tribe; I was but a dry husk blown out to sea. And yet—and yet—we loved.” He brushes the sorrow’s-brine from his eyes. “We loved.”

  Labiaxa bends down to kiss his brow. Touching the moon-shaped incisions on her throat, her father says:

  “And these, these are a bodily remembrance of that otherworldly love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gills,” he says.

  “So I’m not a freak? Not a monster? Do you mean to say I’m—?”

  “Hear me, Daughter, and hear me well: our tales of merpeople and Nereids astride sea horses, they ring fabulous to our ears. But these tales are not fantasy. Your mother is Queen Ô of Nautika. You were born to us on this day eighteen years ago in that undersea city. Your mother wanted above all else to keep you there in her subaquatic queendom. But alas! You are a hybrid child, and in your infancy you were unfit to survive at such depths. The Queen, your mother, sent you back with me to live on the land. And she remained behind, in Her glittering temple beneath the waves.”

  He points toward the shore, and Labiaxa follows his gesture.

  “Ah, Nautika! Sica! Water and air separate our two civilizations. But we are divided by a boundary still harder to cross. Gender. We Sicans live by the blunt laws of man. Cruel. War-making. Arrogant. But Nautika is a feminine world. It thrives on kindness and light, under the soft aegis of womankind. Thus they suffer no war, no greed, no poverty. Theirs is a kinder and vastly superior civilization.”

  Here Aricos embarks on a history that reaches back to the dim predawn of memory. In a primitive time, countless aeons past, our ancestors were driven by rival humanoids from the cradle of Africa to the northernmost reaches of the continent. This was the flight the Nautikons memorialize as the Great Estrodus. At journey’s end, in what is now the land of the Berbers, they discovered a great inland sea connected to the Mediterranean by a network of rivers. Our protohuman forebears sought shelter in these waters. They took sustenance there, finding peace and a new way of life. Some returned to terra firma, but some, the wisest and most compassionate of this bold tribe, did not.

  After many millennia their very bodies were transformed by proximity to the water. They adapted to the aquatic realm with gills, webbed appendages, streamlined bodies, a warming layer of subcutaneous fat, and voice boxes capable of hypersonic calls and echolocation. Never again would they breach the surface to sip the dry, cruel air that had caused them such hardship.

  Over thousands of years the Nautikons built a sprawling undersea empire entirely cut off from their surface-dwelling cousins. Their domain spread across the floor of the Mediterranean, and as far east as the Black Sea. By the time of Aricos’s telling, this singular city, the domed megalopolis called Nautika, was its final outpost.

  Aricos rises stiffly from his knees and, dusting off his tunic, says: “But now, even that final outpost—” He attempts a smile. “But this is your Arrival Day, dear daughter! How can I bestow upon you such a burden as this at the most joyous moment of your womanhood?”

  He replaces his skullcap.

  “But Papa,” shouts Labiaxa, “I don’t understand. This is the best Arrival gift I could ever receive! You have given me a mother! At long last, a mother!”

  “Yes, child. Yes. But, sadly, I must also take her away.”

  At these words the laboratory trembles violently. A ceramic mortar crashes to the floor.

  When Labiaxa looks at her father again, he wears a glum expression. Throughout the morning, he explains, he has been consulting his instruments, and they have revealed to him portents of a most dire nature. Nearby Mount Etna is preparing to erupt. And when it does, Nautika will be lost forever.

  “Not since the rape of Persephone have the fires of Etna been stoked to such fury. That was some thousand years ago, and it was a mother’s rage that lit those fearsome flukes. But I see not Demeter’s hand in this conflagration. This is surely the wrath of Dis himself! Today, the giants entombed thence have been roused to fiery violence once again. By dawn tomorrow your mother will be incinerated and entombed in stone, and alongside Her all the ancient wonders of Nautika.”

  Now comes the most difficult part of Aricos’s story.

  “Queen Ô saved my life,” says the old man, looking older now. “And She gave me yours. In exchange the
Queen asked only one concession. On your day of Arrival, what the Nautikons call Eeeeo, you must be returned to Her. By then, She surmised, your gills should have been developed enough for you to live amongst her kind.”

  Labiaxa gasps. It is now plain what her father is asking of her.

  “But why must I go?” she begs. “You know I can never leave you, Papa!”

  “I’m afraid you have no choice. It seems the Queen has a secret fate planned for you. And nothing—whether it be earthly cataclysm or a father’s love—may interfere with fate.”

  “Whatever can it be?”

  “I dare not speak of it. I cannot speak of it, for it surpasses my understanding. My masculine tongue can scarcely shape the words. Know only that your mother needs you.”

  Her mind rebels. Her eyes dart about the laboratory, looking for some escape. But there is no way out. Labiaxa must return to the mother she never knew, to the home she never knew. To Nautika.

  “I swore before all the gods,” Aricos says, “that I would fulfill your mother’s only wish. And now the hour of fulfillment is upon us.” He cannot meet his daughter’s beseeching eyes. “You must fly, child—fly to your motherworld!”

  She clings to him, tears at his tunic. “But how, Papa? How will I find this place?”

  “The sperm whale will guide you,” he says. “Her name is Oooeea, and she is the only conduit between our two worlds. She carried your poor papa to his rescue in Nautika. She carried the two of us to the surface after you were born. Now she will carry you home.”

  “But where? This is all so fantastical! Where will I find this whale? And when I reach my motherland, how will she know me?”

  “By this.” From the workbench he takes the strange water pitcher and, handing it to his daughter, says, “This is the Gargoulette of Nautika.”

  Labiaxa touches the handle, and the earthenware vessel again begins to glow with its otherworldly light. The clay turns translucent. The hamsa waves on its flank and the hips of the moon goddess begin to sway. Then she sees the source of its animating fire, three phosphorescent jellyfish floating inside the pitcher.

  “Lunar medusae,” says her father. The floor trembles and the three glowing creatures bob like moons reflected on a bay. “Long exiled from their home, whenever the Gargoulette is touched by the sea—or by a daughter of the sea—the three medusae burn with longing.”

  Aricos beholds Labiaxa with melancholy, burning it seems with his own phosphorescent longing.

  “Merely step into the surf and raise high the Gargoulette,” he explains. “The medusae will summon Oooeea to your aid. And the sperm whale will convey you to Nautika. But take good care of this talisman, for it shall also be your calling card at the court of the Queen.”

  NINE

  The next time I consulted the Helvner it was 8:38 p.m. I knew the pool closed at 9:00 so I surfaced, toweled off, and headed back to my room.

  Through the wall I could hear the weather report going full throttle. The Nautikon seemed to be alone for once, and for that I was pretty grateful. I stripped off my swim trunks, showered, and changed into the slacks and Harry Truman shirt, which were now more or less dry except for some dampness in the lower fathoms of the pockets.

  Suddenly I became aware of my stomach. The swimming-pool hunger and the regular hunger had combined to form a superhunger that conveyed me back to the dining area, where I ordered a jumbo plate of scrambled eggs. I could see the waitress waging an internal debate in her brain. It was dinnertime: eggs would be a special request. She would be justified in telling me to go to hell. Instead she snapped up my menu and turned on her heels. The action was so swift, so aggrieved that her spun-poly skirt actually flew up.

  The eggs arrived via busboy, a depressing object lesson in the dangers of early athletic success. On the sliding scale of brawn to paunch, he was slipping inexorably paunchward. I looked inside his bland jock eyes, but I could tell that his mind was elsewhere. It sat in a dark room, watching his body score a junior-varsity touchdown on a projector screen. His mind watched, counting the record yardage that ticked by behind him. The busboy was too stupid to know he was a failure, which I guess is better than being too smart to know you’ll never succeed.

  I dispatched the scrambled eggs in mere minutes. I was downing my fourth ice water and awaiting a fifth, which didn’t seem to be forthcoming. As for the Nautikon, he was nowhere to be seen, so I stood to get the attention of the waitress. She relayed my message to the busboy, who brought my check as slowly as humanly possible. I tipped too much, as usual, and walked to the hotel bar to kill time.

  And—what do you know—there was my new friend. He sat alone on a very tall stool at a very tall table. His very tall tumbler was already drained down to the ice. The sucking sound I heard was the Nautikon trying to pick up stuff on his tabletop with a bendy straw. I watched him suck until his bluish face turned burgundy, but for all his effort, he only managed to raise a sugar packet a few inches off the table. Their lung capacity is not great. When the packet dropped, I heard him curse softly to himself.

  I sat at the bar with my back to him. The bartender was a woman of about fifty. She was some kind of goth or Wiccan, with black hair, black fingernails, and a pale neck festooned with clunky runic jewelry.

  “What can I get you?” she asked.

  I raised one finger to stop time for a second while I took a few notes in my binder. And then, just when I was ready to place my order, I heard a voice behind me:

  “Hey, man.”

  It was the voice of the Nautikon. As the only other man in the bar, I could easily deduce that he was talking to me. The Wiccan bartender raised her eyebrows. I did nothing. Then he started shouting:

  “I said hey!”

  I ordered a beer.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said.

  The fade on the back of my neck, still somewhat neat from Jean’s last-ever haircut, was standing on end. If I’d been a porcupine, I would have shot the hairs out like quills and scurried into the underbrush. But I’m not a porcupine. I’m soft and defenseless. The Nautikon stood close behind me.

  “Didn’t I see you in Colorado…?” He had to think for a moment. “In Colorado Springs?” he said. “Kinda weird we just happen—just happen to have the same travel itinerary.”

  I spun back on my barstool to face him, hoisting my pint glass as a gesture of détente. I was smiling, but to tell the truth the corners of my mouth were only being held up by the terror in my eyes.

  “Yeah,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “It’s just an observation.”

  “You know what I think?” he said. I started drinking my beer, something I make a policy of never doing, for reasons that will soon become clear. The entire pint went down in one gulp, and my head instantly turned weird. “Do you know what I think?” His words came out slurry and cold, like something extruded from a soft-serve machine.

  “No—”

  “I think somebody sent you here is what I think. And I intend to find out who. What is it with you people? Do you think we’re all oblivious, or do you think we’re going to cut and run the minute you do your suicide bomber song and dance?” He was pointing at me with the bendy straw. “You try any of that cute Lockerbie shit in my jurisdiction, and—pow!” He jabbed at me with the straw. A single dot of pink stained my shirtfront.

  The bartender set down a follow-up beer. The wooden thunk made me jump. I thanked her through the corner of my mouth, and by the time I turned back around, the Nautikon had advanced to within inches of my face. My field of vision was all Nautikon, his broad chest so close I could almost hug the guy, which under the circumstances would have probably sent the wrong signal.

  “You mind if I—?” Inexplicably his tone had turned chummy. He gestured at the empty stool next to mine. My hands were all over my pint glass, all over the bar. The Nautikon was sitting beside me! Beside Jim! I bounded from fear to disappointment
to awe and back again, stones in a raging white water of emotions. At any moment I might slip and—and what?

  “Can I tell you—can I tell you what tonight is, buddy?” He extracted a ten from his pocket (terrestrial cash!). “Another Screw,” he told the bartender. “And this time, hurt me a little.” He gave a sour snort that was supposed to represent laughter. It was the kind of utterance designed to mock the whole institution of mirth. “Tonight”—he stared at my throat—“is my goddamn wedding anniversary.”

  Congratulating him felt like the wrong thing to do.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, lifting my beer and drinking again. “I understand that’s a cause for great rejoicing among your people.”

  He looked confused, then scowled. “The bitch is dead!” He kicked the bar so hard you could hear the bottles tinkle together on the other side.

  His cocktail arrived not a moment too soon. The Wiccan muttered some kind of incantation, then she smiled at me. I remember thinking that she had good teeth for somebody in her cultural subset.

  The Nautikon still had the bendy straw from his previous drink. He combined it with his new straw to form a compound straw with massive sucking potential. The pink fluid disappeared in a single pull. He never took his eyes off my throat. By then I was really, really scared.

  “The bitch,” he repeated, now smiling. He leaned even closer to my face, and at this proximity his complexion was truly intense. From his chin to his hairline there wasn’t a single pore or patch of stubble. And from this vantage point I could plainly see the white scars of his man-gills peeking out over the collar of his knit shirt.

  By now the beer was flooding my spatial and temporal lobes, so the next few scenes flipped by in a series of still images, like flash cards. In the first one he slapped another bill on the bar. In the next I saw him weave across the room, bouncing from table to table. Then I was looking into my second, or third, beer. Then the second or third beer was empty. And in the final scene I heard a loud ping and saw the Nautikon standing in the elevator. He glared at me across the lobby. The doors closed, and I found myself alone with the Wiccan.